Kerson writes:
When conceiving this album, I asked myself what I would be searching for in any musical experience. It was clear there was a sense of duality to my answer – on the one hand, I want to be immersed in an intense, heartfelt soundscape that reflects the multifaceted nature of what it means to be human, and on the other hand, I felt it was equally important to be transported to a different world in the ethereal sense, far away from the realities of day-to-day life.
I wanted this album to reflect the journey from one extreme to the other, as if the solo violin, not unlike a protagonist’s character arc, undergoes a transformation from beginning to end. With this in mind, it felt natural to settle on this unusual pairing of concertos. The Britten lives what seems like a raw and totally exposed experience, and the Bruch provides the kind of comfort and uplift I’d look for in spades. Bruch’s In Memoriam serves as a perfect bridge between the two.
With the onset of the last few years, in which the world has experienced much difficulty and uncertainty due to pandemic, war, and crisis, it soon occurred to me just how personal and relevant this choice of repertoire had been, and how much more determined I became to bring this project to fruition. Recording this album in London in January of 2021 with the Philharmonia Orchestra and Patrick Hahn was a profoundly cathartic moment, and it is in this spirit of catharsis that I offer this album.
Immersing myself in its world, I felt a visceral connection to the expressive scope of Britten’s Violin Concerto, as if it didn’t compromise in capturing the complexity of emotions the 25-year-old Britten must have felt at the time of its writing in 1939. With the threat of the Second World War looming on the European continent, Britten decided to join a few friends in America, and it was on this side of the Atlantic that he completed this concerto.
Britten didn’t particularly like discussing his music, but there are a few key elements in this piece that are noteworthy. Firstly, the beginning ostinato figure of the timpani and orchestral atmosphere already suggests Spanish flavor, alluding to the violinist for whom the piece was written, Antonio Brosa. However, a struggle between major and minor, as if the music cannot make up its mind, contributes to an immediate sense of unease.
A militaristic atmosphere is established by the next theme, initiated by percussive chords of the solo violin and timpani, perhaps as a contemplation on, at the time, the ongoing Spanish Civil War. A particularly powerful coda features a melodic cadenza, in which the solo violin embarks on a quiet prayer up high, accompanied by nothing but the timpani and cymbal in hushed tones.
The second movement is a sardonic scherzo that foreshadows Shostakovich’s treatment of his own 1st Violin Concerto in 20 years’ time. Everything eventually explodes into a solo cadenza, where the violin attempts to find its way out of a maze of memories from both movements, culminating in an ascending scale out of which the trombones introduce the mournful theme of the last movement – Passacaglia.
This movement traverses many settings before arriving at what is perhaps one of the most incredible moments in the violin repertoire – the final coda. The violin’s murmurs turn into shrieks, culminating in an ascent up the lowest string and making a sound utterly choked with emotion. A trill serves as a final embodiment of the fight between major and minor before fading out, leaving nothing but ambiguity in its wake.
In contrast, there isn’t anything ambiguous about the purpose of Bruch’s In Memoriam, which the composer called in a letter to his friend and great violinist Joseph Joachim ‘a lamentation, or a kind of instrumental elegy’. Upon encountering its beauty, I found it a bit strange indeed that I had never heard of this piece in my life, one that Bruch even considered his best work for violin.
The full lyrical abilities of the violin are on full display here, and even amongst the moments of turbulence and grief, what draws me in closer are the moments of levity and consolation, often in the form of exchanges between the solo violin and various instruments in the orchestra, that almost allow the piece to process and become at peace with the atmosphere that it first establishes before ending on a more hopeful note.
The same singing quality Bruch brings to his writing for the violin carries over all the same to his Violin Concerto No. 1. He was 26 when he first composed this concerto, and despite a long and bumpy ride until the concerto took its final form, it achieved immense success from the get go. It’s no mystery in my mind as to why, due to the way it seems to effortlessly balance grandeur with intimacy and memorable melodies with sparkling virtuosity.
Bruch’s friendship with Joseph Joachim left much of a mark on this concerto, with the two of them having corresponded and worked together on revisions to bring it to the form we all know and love today. After giving its premiere, Joachim even went on to describe it as the ‘richest, most seductive’ among the German violin concertos at the time.
The rumble of the timpani opens a conversation between solemn chords from the winds and quasi-improvisatory soliloquys from the solo violin, establishing a captivating atmosphere in this ‘Vorspiel’, or prelude, of a first movement in which rhythmic urgency and energy blends with lush lyricism, setting the stage effectively for what is to come in the rest of the piece.
The second movement serves as the heart and gem of the concerto, in which the solo violin and orchestra intertwine seamlessly and lovingly to create some of the violin repertoire’s most moving and intimate moments. Pure musical comfort food. The scintillating finale, bouncing with Hungarian folk flavor reflecting Joachim’s heritage, drives the concerto to an unstoppable and truly triumphant close.